The Gospel of Ben
Popster Ben Lee wants you to awaken from your slumber and live!
Soak gets the word from the pulpit on peace, love and groupies.
By Rick Cipes
Photo by Taylor Crothers
It isn’t too often (any more) that I find myself singing along with a chorus, and even rarer, bopping my head along to a beat. Once you’ve heard the Gospel of Ben Lee you may be sucked in as well. Hallelujah!
I’m speaking to Ben by phone. He’s hanging in Brooklyn, staying on a friend’s couch because: “he doesn’t live anywhere at the moment.” He lives on Planet Earth. He’s on a mission. Wants to awake us from our slumber so we can start lovin’ one another. Is it so wrong?
Right now he’s contemplating what a hassle it would be to put his boots on and brave the chilly New York winter. I am most likely a diversion so he can put it off for another half-hour. But I’ve caught Ben Lee’s disease and that’s the way he likes it – he sounds like he would talk to me for a week if that’s what I needed. He has no use in pretense. He’s a self-help guru in rock n’ roll guise.
At 14 he was in a famous punk band, Noise Addict. By his late teens, he was dating Claire Danes (they’ve recently split). He’s played music with everyone from Kylie Minogue to the Beastie Boys and even actor Jason Schwartzman. Now, at 26, and a long ways from his angrier punk roots, Lee delivers a solid piece of pop mastery on his sixth album Awake is the New Sleep – a title that sounds like it should be packaged alongside another hot singer/songwriter, Conor Oberst’s (Bright Eyes) I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning. Although, whereas Oberst travels to the dark side of the moon and back, Lee prefers spending his musical time catching the rays and trying to rally the collective sunshine in us all.
SOAK: How would you describe the new album?
BL: It’s an album that pretty much deals with hope and faith, and how you jump into life knowing it’s a risk, knowing you could get hurt, knowing you can be vulnerable and yet you still jump in a hundred percent.
SOAK: In the past, you’ve described some of your musical experiences as a struggle. How did this one go?
BL: Oh, it was an amazing experience. It’s a really rare experience where you don’t feel like you’re building something. It’s more like you’re receiving a gift. You know what I mean? Everything just happened so easily. I haven’t had many experiences like that. It’s starting to get like that more and more. I do feel like for a long time, I bought into a lot of the bullshit about everything having to be a struggle to be quality. And in my experience, in creativity, the more relaxed I am, the more joy there is, and the better the work. But that’s just me. Maybe it’s different if you’re in System of a Down or doing some heavier things.
SOAK: Like a performance artist who paints in blood.
BL: And semen.
SOAK: Which is always lovely to see.
BL: Yeah.
SOAK: How did the Ben’s come about?
BL: I was friends with [Ben] Kweller and [Ben] Folds, separately, and one day Folds just called me and said: “Dude, I’m going to tour Australia and I think we should all do it together. And I was like: “Oh! Let’s make an EP!” Because that’s my answer to everything: let’s write songs together. I love collaboration. That was kind of like the beginning for me to have these creative experiences and just…fun.
SOAK: Speaking of collaboration, what’s going on with “Mixed Tape?”
BL: It’s done but it’s not mixed yet. Hopefully it will come out later in the year. It’s kind of cool, because I got people to sing words that they wouldn’t normally sing. Note: Mixed Tape is a mix of Ben’s friends playing his music.
SOAK: Such as?
BL: For Folds I wrote this kind of homoerotic song about listening to the radio and feeling sexy. He found it very uncomfortable.
SOAK: Have you ever pissed any of your family or friends off with something you’ve written?
BL: Yeah, I’m sure I have. I remember a few incidents over the years where people would come to me and say, “gosh, I don’t know why you wrote that.” And I think sometimes they don’t understand that a song is just a moment. It doesn’t necessarily have to sum up some kind of comprehensive issue you’re talking about. And more and more, I feel like the songs come from somewhere beyond, anyway. So sometimes you just have to serve them and really not get too concerned with how people are going to respond to you.
SOAK: Otherwise you’re censoring your process.
BL: Right. And you’ve got to be a little bit protective of that and believe in it.
SOAK: How come the Ataris took a shot at you in their song “Ben Lee?”
Ataris:
I never met someone so jaded
Your music's really over rated
Nothing but a lot of pretentious noise
I know that Claire Danes is your chick
To me you're just some ugly prick
BL: I don’t know. Apparently, I met them and they didn’t like me. I don’t know, people take shots at you. That seems to be part of the process of living. If you’re a musician or something, and come from such a public forum.
SOAK: Are you not returning serve?
BL: Well, I don’t even know who they are.
SOAK: Maybe they’re trying to start up an east/west rap-type feud.
BL: Maybe. But my dreams are too big to worry about having feuds.
SOAK: Why do you make music?
BL: I think what really drives me today is that it’s my way of helping, you know what I mean? Like the world has a lot of problems. People are sad, get depressed, they suffer a lot. And I know when I play live, I just try to bring them some joy and bring them a bit of hope.
SOAK: Does music have the power to change people on a conscious level? Or is the transformation subconscious?
BL: It’s so beyond our understanding. It’s like a vibration, and your whole body starts changing and opening up. I can’t even explain it. It’s so beyond intellectual capacity to understand. But faith, like somebody’s faith in what they’re doing, is totally contagious. I think that’s how I started writing Catch My Disease. Because it kind of is like a disease; the joy that comes from creation. It’s like a fungus.
SOAK: A fungus? In a good way.
BL: Right. I’m Ben Lee and I’m an emotional fungus.
SOAK: But I bet the chicas still worship you. What’s the best line you’ve heard from a groupie?
BL: Oh, man. Um…(several moments float by) Some of them, just…I kind of like it when the girls are straightforward. And, you know, you’re leaving and, “Okay, look: Why don’t you come back with us and you can have sex with two beautiful women and have a good time and then be in bed by three?” And, you know, whether you take them up on it or not, it’s just nice to know that that degree of honesty still exists.
SOAK: Yeah: If you’re a rock star!
[Lee laughs at the truth of the moment.]
SOAK: And so the dating life is going pretty well?
BL: It’s kind of like, it’s musical.
SOAK: Musical chairs?
BL: No, no. My commitment is primarily to music. Aside from frivolous things that happen in your mid-20s and playing rock n’ roll, there’s not a whole lot of room in this instant for a partner in there. I look forward to one day settling down, but I’m on a mission. I’ve got to give it my all right now.
SOAK: What about musical influences?
BL: When I was a little kid it was like Michael Jackson, Tiffany, Pet Shop Boys, you know, stuff that was on the radio all the time. My older sister used to listen to Roxy Music, Fleetwood Mac and Bowie, stuff like that. And then I got into Motley Crue, and Guns and Roses and Nirvana.
SOAK: And Jack n’ the Beanstalk.
BL: I used to sing it all the time. Once in kindergarten, one of the teachers had some kind of emergency and left me in charge of the class. So, when the parents came to pick us up, I was standing on a desk, doing all the characters, the whole thing from beginning to end.
SOAK: What’s the key to keeping your creativity flowing?
BL: I guess it’s just not looking at it as a thing that’s separate to the rest of my life. Like, for me, everything is creative, every act. The way you eat, the way you walk, the way you dream. And for me, the more I put into that, and the more attentive I am, the things – like ideas and songs – flow naturally.
SOAK: What is surrender about for you?
BL: It’s just about the flow of things. I always think of that Einstein quote: that one of the fundamental things a human being has to decide is whether we live in a friendly or a hostile universe. And I believe we live in a friendly universe. I believe the way things are going…it’s trying to teach us something. It’s trying to elevate us. And that most of our problems come from resisting. So, for me, surrender is trying to get back in sync with what path I’m meant to be on.
SOAK: You once said you were either God’s gift to music or a phony who should be shot. Who are you today?
BL: Well, I don’t think I should be shot. But I don’t think I’d ever come out and say such arrogant things as I did in the past. To me, more and more (I don’t believe I’m God’s gift to music), but I believe I have something that I can do that no one else can do. I believe I am doing something unique and for me that’s reason enough to keep going.
SOAK: And in 2003 you told the Boston Globe: “I just want to tour. I want to remind people I’m alive.”
BL: Well maybe they know I’m alive now. I guess I want more than just to tell them I’m alive now. Hopefully I can remind them that they’re alive. That’s the new mission.
SOAK: We’re all in this together.
BL: Exactly.
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